* * * * *
I accept your sympathy for my misfortunes in publishing. It serves me
right (I don't mean the sympathy does) for publishing. I should have
known that if a publisher cannot beat an author otherwise, or is too
honest to do so, he will do it by failing. Once in London a publisher
gave me a check dated two days ahead, and then (the only thing he
could do to make the check worthless)--ate a pork pie and died. That
was the late John Camden Hotten, to whose business and virtues my
present London publishers, Chatto and Windus, have succeeded. They
have not failed, and they refuse pork pie, but they deliberately
altered the title of my book.
All this for your encouragement in "learning to write." Writing books
is a noble profession; it has not a shade of selfishness in
it--nothing worse than conceit.
O yes, you shall have your big basket of flowers if ever I catch you
playing in public. I wish I could give you the carnations,
lilies-of-the-valley, violets, and first-of-the-season sweet peas now
on my table. They came from down near you--which fact they are trying
triumphantly and as hard as they can to relate in fragrance.
I trust your mother is well of her cold--that you are all well and
happy, and that Phyllis will not forget me. And may the good Lord
bless you regularly every hour of every day for your merit, and every
minute of every hour as a special and particular favor to Your uncle,